NYT Connections answers for Sunday, July 19, 2026 (puzzle #1134) are below. The four groups range from electrical hardware to toilet mechanics to compound expressions built around the word “face.”
Yellow – Circuit Components: BREAKER, FUSE, RELAY, SWITCH
Green – Digital Coupling Verbs: CONNECT, JOIN, PAIR, SYNC
Blue – Things Toilets Do: DRAIN, FLUSH, REFILL, SWIRL
Purple – ___ Face: GAME, LONG, POKER, STRAIGHT
The Yellow group is a clean electrical hardware set. BREAKER (circuit breaker), FUSE, RELAY, and SWITCH are all discrete components in a circuit – each controls or interrupts the flow of current in a distinct way. The trap is SWITCH and CONNECT, both of which carry digital-device associations and could plausibly slip into Green if a solver locks on “things you do on a device” rather than “physical circuit parts.”
Green’s Digital Coupling Verbs – CONNECT, JOIN, PAIR, SYNC – describe what devices do when they establish a link: a Bluetooth speaker pairs, a phone syncs, accounts join a network, peripherals connect. The category rewards solvers who think in device-setup language rather than social or physical joining, since JOIN and CONNECT both appear in non-digital contexts that would fit other groups.
Blue is Sunday’s most concrete group: DRAIN, FLUSH, REFILL, SWIRL are four distinct phases of a toilet cycle, stated in roughly operational order. The difficulty is that DRAIN, FLUSH, and SWIRL all work as general water verbs outside the toilet context, and REFILL appears in kitchen and bottle associations as readily as in a cistern. Solvers who isolated the toilet reading early had an advantage.
Purple’s “___ Face” group is the puzzle’s sharpest category. GAME face (focused determination), LONG face (visible disappointment), POKER face (deliberate expressionlessness), and STRAIGHT face (suppressed laughter) are all compound expressions where the modifier describes an emotional state through its visible effect. POKER is the most likely trap: poker face is the most culturally prominent of the four and may anchor a solver’s first instinct, but GAME, LONG, and STRAIGHT need to follow before the category confirms.
Today’s Wordle #1855 answer for July 18 was BOOTH. The NYT Strands #867 answers for July 18 are also live.
